CITY TRIBUNE
Survey of city’s old cemeteries reveals 13th Century headstone
The earliest gravestone unearthed within the city walls dates from the 13th century and contains a plea for prayer to transport a man’s soul out of purgatory written in Norman French.
A major survey of the 28 cemeteries and graveyards of Galway City has so far forensically documented the graves in five – Old Rahoon, Menlo, The Dominican in the Claddagh, St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church and Roscam Graveyards.
The survey will be one of the subjects up for discussion at this year’s seventh annual Galway City Heritage Conference, a free event open to the public that is taking place on Saturday, June 24 in the Harbour Hotel where archaeology, cartography and art history at home and abroad will be explored.
So far the earliest gravestone unearthed by the survey across the city boundaries after six years dates back to between the eighth and the tenth century at Roscam.
Galway City Heritage Officer Dr Jim Higgins said while no name exists on the grave, the style of the cross dates it as early Christian.
Within the old city walls, the burial place of Adam Bury is believed to the location of the oldest known gravestone.
“The inscription asks for a prayer for his soul. It says there’s so many pardons given, it refers to the idea of purgatory, requiring people to say a certain amount of prayers to relieve his time in purgatory. He was a descendant of the Anglo Normans, it doesn’t say anything about him, rather it was more concerned about asking for his soul to be saved,” explained Jim.
Elsewhere the survey has uncovered some fascinating inscriptions – they will all eventually form part of an extensive online record of gravestones in each of the 28 graveyards. It will prove an invaluable resource to people researching family and local history.
“There’s a one in St Nicholas about a boy who died in the 1820s when a carriage rolled over him when he was playing one of these spinning tops,” recalls Jim.
“There are hundreds of examples of symbols denoting the trade of a person – that’s unusual on a national level, it was only in County Galway, parts of Sligo and Roscommon you get that. A shepherd’s crook denotes a shepherd, a bottle denotes feeding lambs that were orphaned; in the old graveyard in Rahoon there is the symbol of keys, denoting a locksmith, and a picture of a hammer and an anvil to show a blacksmith in Forthill.”
The project is being funded by Galway City Council and the Heritage Council, with the support of Irish Historic Graves.
Among the most spectacular graves to visit is the one given by the Blake family in Menlo, while the cemetery in Bohermore has quite the wow factor.
Here are buried Lady Augusta Gregory, poet Pádraic Ó Conaire and William Joyce, who was known as Lord Haw Haw for his broadcasts during the second world war on behalf of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Also well worth visiting for its fantastic vaults and box tombs in Forthill Cemetery on Lough Atalia Road.
When each gravestone inscription is published online, a leaflet of each graveyard will be produced.
”We’ll reprint them in a book so people can have the plan of each graveyard and each of the monuments will be numbers so you can go onto your computer and see every inscription.”
Up to 200 people attend the annual heritage conference in Galway.
This year there is a particularly impressive menu of speakers. Among them the internationally renowned archaeologist Dr Seamus Caulfield, who is the leading authority on the Neolithic Stone Age Ceide Fields in Co Mayo.
Recent earlier discoveries dating to the Middle Stone Age and excavations by Michael, Clodagh and Elaine Lynch in West Clare will be presented.
Stunning new medieval sculptures found in Cóilin O Drisceoil’s archaeological dig at St Mary’s Church, Kilkenny City will be explored, some of which have parallels in the Galwegian sculpture at St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church.
The conference is free of charge and includes a light lunch but places should be booked with Elaine Coffey at Galway City Council 091 536410 or elaine.coffey@galwaycity.ie
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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